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10 Solar Marketing Strategies to Boost Sales

If you run a solar company, chances are you’re faced with a lot of competition — from large, well-financed national firms to smaller start-ups. So how do you prepare your sales team to meet this challenge when selling home solar installations?

A good place to start is by reading this article from Grid Freedom by way of CleanTechnica, one of our favorite websites on solar energy.

The reason is simple. It's a lack of knowledge by sales reps on how to sell solar array systems. Selling solar to a homeowner is both a high tech and high touch transaction. It’s important to give your sales team the knowledge and tools they need to balance these elements and be successful.

The article provides 10 powerful strategies for solar marketing. All of them fall into three categories:

I. Education, education, education. As your potential customers continue to struggle with: 1) high utility bills, 2) fluctuating fuel costs, and 3) a little guilt about contributing to emissions and global warming, they will seek out information on solar energy for their home. Your sales team needs to answer this quest for information with high quality content that addresses their questions, concerns and determine where they are in the buying cycle – awareness, consideration, or decision-making. The education-based strategies in the article include:

1. Spelling out the cost savings of going solar.

2. The long-term expense of being at the mercy of fluctuating fuel costs.

3. Leveraging the power of the neighborhood community where your installs occur.

4. Although it’s only a secondary motivator, digging a little deeper into how motivated your prospect is by being eco-friendly is important.

II. Brand differentiation. Most sales associates can easily and intelligently articulate the cost-saving benefits of solar. Where things get a bit trickier is when they have to tell customers why their firm is better than the solar provider down the street. How do they dispel the perception that "all solar is the same?" Strategies for creating a brand differentiation include:

6. Know the strengths and weaknesses of your competition, as well as those of your own company. If you’re not sure how to go about this, check out one of our most popular blog posts on how to assess your brand.

III. Remember your marketing funnel. A sales team will quickly languish if there aren’t enough leads to keep them busy. We all know that making sales is a numbers game. The more leads you have, the more confident your team will be, and the more deals they'll close. The lead-generating strategies in the article include:

7. Word-of-Mouth referrals, especially from customers.

8. Investing in popular lead-gen websites specializing in solar – like Grid Freedom and CleanTechnica. Be sure to assess the investment against the cost of customer acquisition. If you go this route, be sure to give it enough time to produce measurable results, 3 – 6 months minimum.

9. Consider co-marketing with complementary businesses, as well as sponsorships of community events, sports teams, schools, etc.

10. Humor and entertainment. Studies show that making someone laugh will capture their attention and improve memory (brand awareness in your case). It's okay to be funny and use appropriate humor in your marketing.

We thought this was a really good read and encourage you to look at it more thoroughly. Let us know what you think.